Inbound links - why does Google show 0 and others show many

[kciprize]

I have been working on building links for my site and have been checking for links to my site. The good news is that MSN, Yahoo and other engines are showing hundreds of links.

The bad news is that Google is reporting no links to my site, even though i've been indexed and re-indexed by them. I've noticed that MANY other websites have this exact same problem.

Can anyone provide insight on this issue and let me know how this can be resolved? Thanks!

[Benjamin Dona]

Hey kciprize,

I'll try to give you some insight as I understand it.

First, MSN is always faster than the other SE's at publishing recognized links. Yahoo and Google are slower and Google always only shows a "sampling" of the links they find.

Second, Google has not had a Backlink update since Dec 19, 2005. When they have the next update, they should probably show a few of the links you have at your site.

You can try doing a search. At Google, type in Links: www. yourdomainname and see what it shows for your site.

Don't let it bother you though, if your site is cached and indexed than Google knows about your links and over time will show more of them in their sampling.

[occastles]

Yes, Google does show backlinks slowly... but during the last update of Google, they have dropped many link pages from their directory. Many AA and P2A sites have lost all (or most) of their inbound links because of the linking structure used by these sites.

Try to stay OFF link pages, and try to stay away from straight reciprocal linking. They might still be of some value today, but in the very near future, reciprocal linking will not be of any value at all.

Instead, structure your linking strategy into only inbound links to your main website, and spread your out-bound links across many websites on different pages. I started this link structure about a year ago, and my search engine rankings have sky-rocketed. I went from page 10 to unknown for many of my search terms, to page #1 (if not the #1 spot) on Google for many of my key search phrases, like Orange COunty Luxury Homes.

I no longer link TO any website from my main website, but anyone requesting a "link swap" creates an inbound link to my main website. Now I have a one-way in-bound link... a VERY good thing. Then this person gets to pick any other of my websites to put their link on. We even go as far as creating a custom paragraph for ourselves, and picking a page on their website to put this paragraph. THIS IS THE BEST THING. As we both now have a very natural looking one-way in-bound link. The only thing better then that is to get one from an authoritative website.

[pcdoc]

I no longer link TO any website from my main website, but anyone requesting a "link swap" creates an inbound link to my main website. Now I have a one-way in-bound link... a VERY good thing. Then this person gets to pick any other of my websites to put their link on.

Deanna, don't you realize just how selfish that sounds?

[occastles]

Why would that sounds selfish??? We both get and benefit from the same thing. A one way in-bound link... it's just not "reciprocal" from the same sites. A links to B, B links to C.

[pcdoc]

it's just not "reciprocal" from the same site

That's why it's selfish, but hey, it's all about winning, isn't it?

[Nickie]

Well, I'm very happy participating in reciprocal link exchanges with related sites.

In fact, I noticed just a few minutes ago that G has increased the number of links that they show, so obviously they don't feel reciprocal linking with related sites is all bad. They also increased my page rank over the past week or so and I still have quite a new site.

It seems to me that adding information that visitors to your site will find helpful is a good thing, whether it is links to other related sites or services or information about the services you provide.